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Universal Basic Mobility (U.S): Making recommendations and the case for more accessible and affordable transport system in cities
“The logic is powerful: Just like connectivity, mobility provides essential access to job opportunities, family, and serves basic needs like food, shelter, and medical care. Just as you can’t get a job if you don’t have a phone for an interview, you can’t get to an in-person interview without mobility—or to and from work once you’re hired.
A right to mobility doesn’t mean free mobility for everyone, but there are strong incentives to make at least some services free, like public transit. Estonia has implemented free public transit nationally, and Paris is studying it. In cities with free public transit, a common theme is that the collective benefits of encouraging its use by everyone—enabling cities to reduce traffic, pollution, and parking in central areas—outweigh the relatively low cost of providing it to everyone.”
Read the full article here on CityLab: Universal Basic Mobility Is Coming. And It’s Long Overdue
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Singapore’s land constraints: Minister Heng says we need better urban designs to boost city’s identity, overcome space constraints and competing needs
“There are three areas Singapore can target to become a more liveable city, he added.
First, good urban design will become even more important as it can boost a city’s character and identity as such spaces become similar in an increasingly globalised world.
Second, advancements in urban design will require more productive methods, he said.
Third, Singapore needs to keep up with the accelerating pace of technological advancement. “To continue building Singapore into a green, highly liveable and smart city, our stakeholders in our design and built environment and facilities management must come together and collaborate,” said Mr Heng.”
Read the full article here on The Straits Times: Good urban design increasingly important: Heng Swee Keat
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War by technology (U.S, China): 30 Top U.S companies were victims to China’s network infiltration through a stealth microchip inserted into hardware during the manufacturing stage at China’s factories
“One country in particular has an advantage executing this kind of attack: China, which by some estimates makes 75 percent of the world’s mobile phones and 90 percent of its PCs. Still, to actually accomplish a seeding attack would mean developing a deep understanding of a product’s design, manipulating components at the factory, and ensuring that the doctored devices made it through the global logistics chain to the desired location—a feat akin to throwing a stick in the Yangtze River upstream from Shanghai and ensuring that it washes ashore in Seattle. “Having a well-done, nation-state-level hardware implant surface would be like witnessing a unicorn jumping over a rainbow,” says Joe Grand, a hardware hacker and the founder of Grand Idea Studio Inc. “Hardware is just so far off the radar, it’s almost treated like black magic.”
But that’s just what U.S. investigators found: The chips had been inserted during the manufacturing process, two officials say, by operatives from a unit of the People’s Liberation Army. In Supermicro, China’s spies appear to have found a perfect conduit for what U.S. officials now describe as the most significant supply chain attack known to have been carried out against American companies.
Read the full article here on Bloomberg: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies
Picture credits:https://www.pexels.com/photo/action-asia-asian-auto-243116/